HealthPartners' EHR helped Regions Hospital reduce the radiology report turn-around times from two days to four hours

Aug 29 2009

HealthPartners is one of the first organizations in the country to integrate electronic X-rays, MRIs and CT scans and radiology reports into patients’ electronic health records (EHR). The images and the radiology reports can be accessed quickly by doctors at Regions Hospital and at all 25 HealthPartners Clinics. In the past year, Regions Hospital reduced radiology report turn-around times from two days to approximately four hours. This time savings is especially significant given the fact that HealthPartners Clinics and Regions performs about 34,000 radiology exams every month.

“The benefits of being paperless include increased efficiency because images can be available quickly at multiple locations and they cannot be lost,” said Kim LaReau, vice president and chief information officer at Regions Hospital.

Other benefits from this technology include:

• Savings of $130,000 per year on expenses to transcribe radiologists reports
• Eliminating the cost of $300,000 per year to store film.

In its current issue, Health Imaging & IT magazine recognized this technological advance and named Regions Hospital a Top 25 Connected Healthcare Facility in the country.

This technology will be available in 2010 at HealthPartners Central Minnesota Clinic in the St. Cloud area and in western Wisconsin when Hudson Hospital & Clinics and Westfields Hospital, both part of the HealthPartners family of care, are scheduled to implement electronic health records.

http://www.healthpartners.com/